At a Beverly Hills screening facility next Tuesday. Or, if I want to be adventurous, at the Mill Valley Film Festival early next month.

I haven’t paid the slightest attention to Doug Liman‘s Chaos Walking, a dark fantasy flick from Lionsgate that was shot two years ago but has no release date, although it’s expected to open sometime next year. A director-writer friend says “the upcoming epic failure of Chaos Walking could sink Lionsgate, which is why they’ve pushed it off until 2020. After poor test screenings and reshoots last April, Lionsgate is now contemplating selling it to a streaming service as a four-hour miniseries to try to maximize the sale price versus just a two-hour movie. The latest reshoots haven’t helped and they’ve invested way too much in this thing.”

“Hurt people hurt people….the whole world is a strip club…sleep is where and when it happens.”

I knew that Lorene Scafaria‘s Hustlers (STX, 9.13) was a cut above immediately. I mean within five or ten seconds. I could tell that the focus was honest, intimate, up close, and that Scafaria and the actresses were keeping it real as the material allowed. And so I relaxed and settled in.

The first act of Hustlers isn’t so much about the bods and the flash and the cash (although it is) as what the dancer characters — played by Constance Wu, Jennifer Lopez, Keke Palmer, Lili Reinhart, Lizzo and Cardi B — are feeling and grappling with, about the move-it-or-lose-it grind of working at a top-tier Manhattan strip club and how the dancers are all coping with insufficient pay and the constant company of Wall Street “assholes.”

I’ve put quotes around that word because it’s an oft-supplied description from the dancers who were interviewed by Jessica Pressler for her 2015 article (“The Hustlers at Scores“), which inspired Scafaria’s script.

Julia Stiles plays the Pressler character (“Elizabeth”).

I read Pressler’s 2015 article when I got home, and so I know the ins and outs and most of the particulars. Some sharp women decided to turn the tables on the stock traders and Wall Street patrons by getting them drunk and taking them for as much dough as they could, running their credit cards behind their inebriated backs while doing lap dances and flashing their boobs and (I gather) offering private-room blowjobs. Until the scam reached the ears and eyes of the fuzz, and then it all fell apart, charges were filed and the girls had to pay the price.

The fact that this is Scafaria’s most likable and engaging film thus far may be interpreted in some corners as damnation with faint praise. I don’t mean it that way. I simply didn’t care for the premise or the vibe of Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, which Scafaria directed and wrote. I half-liked her follow-up effort, The Meddler, a mother-daughter drama with Susan Sarandon and Rose Byrne, but not enough to write anything about it. But for what it is, Hustlers hits the spot.

Hustlers enjoyed a wowser reception a few days ago at the Toronto International Film Festival. It was applauded for its humanity, spirit, efficiency and general enjoyment factor. Tribune News Service’s Katie Walsh called it “girlie Goodfellas“. On top of which Lopez was talked up as a possible Best Actress contender. In my opinion Constance Wu gives the best performance but the hype machine wants what it wants.

This morning a colleague said that he respected Hustlers “but the film is half music video.” Yeah, I said, but it’s nonetheless focused on the interior lives of the principal dancer characters. And the embezzlement stuff was offered as just and fair could because the marks were assholes — wealthy Wall Street greedheads (indistinguishable from the Wolf of Wall Street guys). Oh, and by the way I blinked and missed poor Frank Whaley.”

The heat that Hustlers got out of Toronto was, I believe, partly if not significantly driven by p.c. factors. It’s a kind of “you go, girl” revenge flick…get those assholes, take their fucking money, fuck those guys, they hurt others to we’re going to hurt them (“Hurt people hurt people”)…yes, yes, yes! Mainly because there’s no cultural group more loathed and despised in this Trumpian age than greedy, swaggering, entitled white guys in pricey suits…three of them are murdered in a subway in Joker and here they’re being fleeced and scamboozled and that’s fine because they FUCKING DESERVE IT!

Bernie Sanders needs to man up and drop out. I know he won’t do this until after Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, but with Droolin’ Joe and Elizabeth Warren tied at 26% each in a new Economist/YouGuv poll (1500 respondents) and Sanders only polling a lousy 16%, it’s the only thing to do.

Sanders and Warren stand for essentially the same progressive principles, and if Bernie disappears a good chunk of his support (at least 10% or 12%) will probably go straight to Warren, which would put her 10% to 12% ahead of Biden. Down with the gaffemaster!

And then Warren could choose Mayor Pete for her vp. Homophobic black voters (of which there are quite a few) might not like this, but what are they gonna do? Vote for Trump?

Bill Maher: “The Trump voter? I don’t think they’re blind to Trump’s myriad flaws. If you talk to them, what they like about him is ‘he’s not politically correct.’ Especially that. I think we underestimate how much America has been choking on political correctness for the last 25 years.”

Except the wokesters, who only manifested a couple of years ago, and cancel culture are a much more malignant manifestation.

Little Women costar Meryl Streep to USA Today‘s Brian Truitt: “Not to hype it, but Little Women is like a masterpiece.”

Apart from the vested aspect, there’s a difference between a famous actress stating that a film she’s made (a) “is a masterpiece” and (b) “is like a masterpiece”…no? Isn’t that a fair thing to note? It would be one thing if Streep had said Little Women “is a flat-out, unambiguous, take-it-to-the-bank masterpiece.”

Obviously she’s speaking very highly of it. She’s sharing honest enthusiasm. I’m just saying that the word “like” is, like, a qualifier.

Sony will open Little Women on 12.25.

I’ve written two or three times about Noah Hawley‘s Lucy In The Sky, and also about the disturbing side issue known as “pizza and darts.” Lucy will have its big Toronto Film Festival debut tonight at 9 pm eastern. Fox Searchlght/Disney will release it on 10.4.19. Here’s a Deadline discussion about the film’s varying aspect ratios, posted on 9.10:

Deadline‘s Anthony D’Alessandro: “The other element about Lucy in the Sky that’s fascinating is how you continually adjust the aspect ratio.”

Hawley: “My goal was to make a movie that was…as close to the experience of being Lucy Cola (a stand-in for the real-life astronaut Lisa Nowak) as I could give you. One of the first thoughts I had is the reduction of scale when she comes back from space. It’s a full-screen experience when she’s up there in space and she’s energized and feels alive in a way she’s never felt alive before, and then the moment she lands back on earth everything feels smaller, and so the screen closes down to what is a 4 × 3 box, and that became the beginning of the cinematic approach to the film, which ended up involving a lot of different aspect ratios and the screen sort of expanding and contracting to try to simulate the feeling of being her so visually and also through the sound design.

“There’s a moment in which you know toward the end of the film where she commits to a path that will ultimately lead to her ruin but in her mind as someone who has never met a problem she can’t solve, but who has been put into a no-win scenario, she goes a bit nuts and she commits to this path of confronting the people she thinks have wronged her and it takes her on the road. In her mind there’s an exhilaration to it and that’s what re-expands the screen in the 15 or 20 minutes of the film.”

HE comment: Hawley doesn’t supply the actual aspect ratio dimensions? No filmmaker worth his or her salt says “4 x 3 box” — they say 1.37:1. Or in the case of The Lighthouse, 1.2:1. And nobody describes 2.39:1 or 2.55:1 aspect ratio as a “full-screen experience.”

You want it short and straight? Okay, here goes, and this is about as plain and blunt-spoken as any assessment you’re likely to read anywhere:

White guys still dominate the movie-reviewing field. A January 2018 USC study found that 77.8% of reviews of a recent sample had been written by males, and 22.2% percent by females, and of these 82% were white and 18% were from underrepresented racial/ethnic backgrounds.

It follows that in today’s atmosphere of politically correct terror and intimidation, “white” and “male” are negative definers, and so fair-skinned guy critics (especially older ones) are white-knuckle terrified of the wokester mob. Plus their ranks are thinning anyway because of the weakening of traditional print outlets.

Which is why white male critics are generally trying to reflexively kowtow and kiss the feet of any film that champions or embodies progressive values. (Like Jojo Rabbit, for example….down with hate!) Because they don’t want to be targeted or ostracized or regarded as out of the swing of things by “them” (women, Millennial progressives, POCs, Twitter fanatics, New Academy Kidz). Which is why you can’t trust many critics these days. Because many (if not most) of them are “playing it safe” in order to protect themselves.

Are they all cowards? Baahing sheep on the hillside, nudged along by p.c. shepherds? No. There are some who tell the truth as best they can and let the chips fall, and for this they deserve everyone’s respect and allegiance. But these fellows are not in the majority.

Just before Telluride the rumble was that Netflix was placing most of its award-season hopes upon Noah Baumbach‘s Marriage Story, which has an emotionally relatable story, a well-chiselled screenplay and dynamic performances from Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson. Not that they don’t respect or believe in Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman, but that they’re unsure how well a sprawling Lawrence of Arabia-sized gangster film will play with Academy and guild members.

But guess what? All the Toronto Film Festival has proven so far is that other would-be contenders don’t have the poetry or the muscle, and that the field is thinning, thinning, thinning. Which means that the more this or that contender falls by the wayside (and I’m saying this knowing that Just Mercy might take the Toronto Film Festival audience award), the better things look for The Irishman, 1917 and Clint Eastwood‘s Richard Jewell.

I’ve also been been channeling a certain hair-on-the-back-of-my-neck feeling that I’ve shared with colleagues, to wit: Marriage Story, which I totally fell for during Telluride and regard as one of the best of the year so far, may (I say “may”) begin to lose a little steam after regular people start talking about it. Ticket buyers and Academy members, I mean. Because emotionally speaking it ain’t Kramer vs. Kramer. It’ll be respected and saluted all around, but I’m sensing that the emotional reception may be on the muted side. Maybe.

Driver will be Best Actor nominated, for sure, but brave and valiant ScarJo may take a hit for standing by Woody.

Toronto-attending critic #1: “I’m starting to hear people already complaining that Baumbach sides more with Driver than Scarjo’s character. Could be a developing controversy down the road.” Toronto-attending critic #2: “The siding-with-Driver observation is a misreading. A closer reading reveals that Driver’s character is actually in the wrong. But most male critics don’t get that. If you ask me the biggest thing working against Marriage Story (at least as far as awards season is concerned) is the Netflix factor. When it’s ‘released,’ it’s going to go into the Netflix Bermuda triangle.”

Strangely, curiously, some Toronto-attending journos have suggested that critically shellacked JoJo Rabbit might somehow become an Oscar hottie. The reason, apparently, is because it takes a bold stand against hate!

This is demented, of course. So many critics these days are willfully forsaking considered critical judgment in favor of yea/nay responses about whether or not a film is saying the right thing according to preferred political currents. And it’s nuts. We’re living through such derangement.

Most sage observers (i.e., myself among them) are sensing that Jojo Rabbit is probably finished as a potential awards nominee. Not with an aggregate Metacritic rating of 50…no way. A potential hit with younger viewers? Maybe.

THR‘s Scott Feinberg: “For some potential viewers, Waititi’s association with Jojo Rabbit is enough to get them to show up to see and, in some cases, to gush over the film, as many certainly did at its world premiere, where it was very warmly received.

“But the next day it clocked in at a terrible 55 percent on Rotten Tomatoes (not helped by the fact that all of the characters seem to speak with different accents), a range from which very few films have ever emerged to receive major Oscar recognition (it is now up to 75 percent, which is better but still not great). There are certainly aspects of the film that are strong — Sam Rockwell‘s crazy performance and Thomasin McKenzie‘s quiet one, the colorful production design, etc.

“But at the end of the day, I just cannot see Academy members gravitating to the film itself in large numbers.”

There’s an upside to David Ehrlich‘s impressionistic remark about how it feels to watch Motherless Brooklyn. The upside is that Edward Norton’s film, which actually runs 144 minutes, could be converted into a modest miniseries after it finishes its theatrical run. Six or seven hours, I’m thinking. A weekend binge watch. I honestly believe that a good portion of the viewing audience is more receptive to longform streaming than a theatrical one-off.

In an award-season handicapper piece on Joker, THR‘s Scott Feinberg (a) skillfully avoids mentioning the term “incels“, (b) basically says that uncomfortable echoes of recent mass shootings by loner nutjobs may be a subliminal factor as far as Academy voters are concerned (and that Joker might therefore be fucked in the awards race), and (c) agrees that Joaquin Pheonix‘s chances of being Best Actor nominated are strong, but at the same time offers a backhanded assessment of his chances of winning.

Feinberg: “The one thing about which everyone seems to agree, though, is that Phoenix, as usual, does his job remarkably well. He is frighteningly believable as Fleck/Joker, not least because, frankly, he has always come across as a little disturbed himself — see not only the 2010 ‘documentary’ I’m Still Here, but even his speech at Monday’s TIFF Tribute Gala, where he was honored.

“[Phoenix] totally committed to the part, dropping an astounding 52 pounds, which certainly makes him look like something is seriously wrong with him. And, most effectively, he plays the character, who has a Tourette’s-like disorder that causes him to laugh at odd times, as someone who is trying his best to be better, but just can’t get out of his own way.”

Translation: Feinberg believes that as the award season grinds on, Phoenix won’t be able to get out of his own way either.

“Deranged nutcases play quite well with the Academy,” Feinberg goes on, “usually in the supporting race, but not infrequently in the lead race as well. The film to which Joker has been most likened is Martin Scorsese‘s Taxi Driver — there is even an homage to that 1976 film in Joker involving a finger pointed at a head like a gun — and Robert De Niro received a best actor Oscar nom for that, losing to another actor who played a crazy guy not unlike Joker (who gets violent on live TV), Network‘s Peter Finch.

“Others nominated in the best actor category for playing wackos include Jack Nicholson for 1985’s Prizzi’s Honor; Anthony Hopkins for 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs, who won over De Niro for Cape Fear; Billy Bob Thornton for 1996’s Sling Blade; Edward Norton for 1998’s American History X; Daniel Day-Lewis for 2002’s Gangs of New York; Johnny Depp for 2007’s Sweeney Todd; and Steve Carell for 2014’s Foxcatcher.”

HE exception: Peter Finch‘s Howard Beale, Jack Nicholson‘s Charley Partanna and Billy Bob Thornton‘s Karl Childers are not “wackos”. They’re simply men on their own odd wavelength, walking their own path, living in their own realm.

Beale behaved like a raving eccentric, true, but he was guided by cosmic perceptions and imbued with a magnificent mystical current and a “great unseen living force”, or what the Hindus call “prana.”

Beale explains early on that he’s not experiencing a psychotic episode “but a cleansing moment of clarity. I’m imbued with some special spirit….a shocking eruption of great electrical energy…I feel vivid, flashing…like I’ve suddenly been plugged into some great electro-magnetic field. But it’s not a breakdown. I’ve never felt more orderly in my life.”

Partanna is a sociopath who works as a crime-family assassin, granted, but if you can get past that he’s a fairly average fellow with “normal” interests and concerns. In the final act he actually reveals himself as a fairly timid and obedient type.

By the end of Sling Blade Childers has shown he’s unable to live by the usual social conventions (as it “thou shalt not murder Dwight Yoakam‘s abusive alcoholic by chopping his head open with a sling blade”) but he’s fundamentally quiet and gentle and compassionate. Feinberg excepted, Karl is no one’s idea of a “wacko”. The reason Sling Blade was a hit is that audiences recognized Karl as a mentally impaired but basically good guy.